Racing uncertainties
From Dr Andrew D. Lawson Sir: The inability to discuss racial difference without being pilloried as a racist is well illustrated by Rod Liddle's article on black athletes ('Black is best', 8 February). If one accepts evolution, then it is likely that some racial groups may become better at some physical activities over the course of time, owing to inheritance rather than societal pressure. There is inherited predisposition or resistance to disease which seems to have come about through natural selection. Having half the gene for sickle-cell anaemia confers resistance to malaria; thus its incidence in West Africa is not by chance or societal pressure.
Genetic determinism is loathed by social scientists, terrified of societies discriminating on the basis of race because of perceived genetic differences in intelligence. However, even if there were minor inherited differences in cognitive ability between races, this would not justify any discrimination. If the JO of all Eskimos was 2 per cent below that of all Germans on average, it does not follow that Eskimo Nell is 2 per cent less clever than Attila the Hun. One cannot generalise from the average to the particular, despite what some of the early eugenicists thought.
We may feel insecure about 40 per cent of general cognitive ability in pre-adolescent children, or some types of aggressive antisocial behaviour in males, being associated with inheritance, but that does not make it false. Differing ability between African long-distance and sprint runners might be explained by one group living at higher altitudes as much as by their respective society's emphasis on athletic abilities. I would never have been able to run as fast as Linford Christie, whatever my societal emphasis was on athleticism.
There is a word for all this in a language from New Guinea — `mokita'. It means truth that we all know but agree not to talk about.
Andrew D. Lawson
Consultant. Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London SW3
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